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"You shall acknowledge no God but Me, no Savior except me. I cared for you in the desert, in the land of burning heat. When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me" (Hosea 13:4-6).

Yesterday Brooksyne had several errands, including dropping off a box of items we had intended to donate to the Thrift Store. When she came home she walked in the house shaking her head and said, "The boxes are still in the car." Although she stopped in at the Thrift Store for a few minutes of shopping, she forgot to drive to the donation site behind the store and drop off the items from the back seat of the car! Surely you've never done anything so forgetful as that, or have you!

Getting forgetful is frustrating but it happens to people at all ages for different reasons. Some contributing reasons would be carelessness, inattentiveness, memory weakness and of course the aging process. Over the years I have lost hundreds of hours of computer work due to my own carelessness.

Early in my years of using the computer I worked for several hours on sermon preparation while also having three or four other programs open. I had not yet saved any of the work. Periodically I was toggling back and forth between windows and somehow I unintentionally hit a button that brought up a screen that stated, "Do you want to save the changes?"

I absentmindedly clicked "no" so I could move on to my own personal material, and then I realized what I had done, closing the program and essentially erasing all that I had been doing. I verbally and emotionally chewed myself out (which was entirely appropriate). All my work over the last several hours was lost somewhere in cyber space. Anyone who's done this knows how hard and frustrating it is to reconstruct the same material a second time! (I have since learned there is a way to recover such work even though you haven't saved it and now "save" my work regularly.)

Infinitely sadder though is the forgetfulness mentioned in the daily text. Although specifically dealing with the children of Israel, it is also a descriptive profile of people from every generation, including our own since God spoke these words through Hosea:

"I cared for you in the desert, in the land of burning heat. When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me." This is sure an indictment of believers in our own generation isn't it!

We have the foundational commandment consistently asserted through Scripture, "You shall acknowledge no God but Me". God alone is our Savior, He cares for us and has abundantly fed us (spiritually and physically). Even the most ardent unbeliever is abundantly blessed by God.

Satisfaction is generally a blessing but it can also be a curse. It's a blessing as we remember the Source of all good things and continue to "praise God from whom all blessings flow", but it's a curse when it leads to pride that is centered on self rather than God.

And such pride leads to the worst kind of forgetfulness. The words spoken by God paint such a sad, ungrateful picture, "Then they forgot Me".

Wherever you've come from, whatever you've received or accomplished, whenever you have the opportunity give all the glory to God. Never forget – anything that we are and anything that we receive are because of God's abundant goodness and His amazing grace!


Be encouraged today,


Stephen & Brooksyne Weber

For many years we have served the Smucker Home Improvement company as chaplains and always enjoyed our brief visit with Tom who, prior to heading out for the day's work, would characteristically be standing at the back of his work truck with his hand through the strap that brought the door down. Tom is retiring and we commend this man for his long steady career of service to mankind as a skilled and dependable tradesman.